The remainder of the service was the usual ceremonies of the Catholic church, and I amused myself with observing the people about me. It was little like a scene of mourning. The officers gradually edged in between the seats, and every woman with the least pretension to prettiness was engaged in anything but her prayers for the soul of the late Archduchess. Some of these, the very young girls, were pretty; and the women, of thirty-five or forty apparently, were fine-looking; but, except a decided air of style and rank, the fairly grown-up belles seemed to me of very small attraction.
I saw little else in Nice to interest me. I wandered about with my friend the surgeon, laughing at the ridiculous figures and villainous uniforms of the Sardinian infantry, and repelling the beggars, who radiated to us from every corner; and, having traversed the terrace of a mile on the tops of the houses next the sea, unravelled all the lanes of the old town, and admired all the splendor of the new, we dined and got early to bed, anxious to sleep once more between sheets, and prepare for an early start on the following morning.
We were on the road to Genoa with the first gray of the dawn: the surgeon, a French officer, and myself, three passengers of a courier barouche. We were climbing up mountains and sliding down with locked wheels for several hours, by a road edging on precipices, and overhung by tremendous rocks, and, descending at last to the sea-level, we entered Mentone, a town of the little principality of Monaco. Having paid our twenty sous tribute to this prince of a territory not larger than a Kentucky farm, we were suffered to cross his borders once more into Sardinia, having posted through a whole State in less than half an hour.
It is impossible to conceive a route of more grandeur than the famous road along the Mediterranean from Nice to Genoa. It is near a hundred and fifty miles, over the edges of mountains bordering the sea for the whole distance. The road is cut into the sides of the precipice, often hundreds of feet perpendicular above the surf, descending sometimes into the ravines formed by the numerous rivers that cut their way to the sea, and mounting immediately again to the loftiest summits. It is a dizzy business, from beginning to end. There is no parapet, usually, and there are thousands of places where half a "shie" by a timid horse, would drop you at once some hundred fathoms upon rocks wet by the spray of every sea that breaks upon the shore. The loveliest little nests of valleys lie between that can be conceived. You will see a green spot, miles below you in turning the face of a rock; and right in the midst, like a handful of plaster models on a carpet, a cluster of houses, lying quietly in the warm southern exposure, embosomed in everything refreshing to the eye, the mountain sides cultivated in a large circle around, and the ruins of an old castle to a certainty on the eminence above. You descend and descend, and wind into the curves of the shore, losing and regaining sight of it constantly, till, entering a gate on the sea-level, you find yourself in a filthy, narrow, half-whitewashed town, with a population of beggars, priests, and soldiers; not a respectable citizen to be seen from one end to the other, nor a clean woman, nor a decent house. It is so, all through Sardinia. The towns from a distance lie in the most exquisitely-chosen spots possible. A river comes down from the hills and washes the wall; the uplands above are always of the very choicest shelter and exposure. You would think man and nature had conspired to complete its convenience and beauty; yet, within, all is misery, dirt, and superstition. Every corner has a cross—every bench a priest, idling in the sun—every door a picture of the Virgin. You are delighted to emerge once more, and get up a mountain to the fresh air.
As we got farther on toward Genoa, the valleys became longer by the sea, and the road ran through gardens, down to the very beach, of great richness and beauty. It was new to me to travel for hours among groves of orange and lemon trees, laden with both fruit and flower, the ground beneath covered with the windfalls, like an American apple-orchard. I never saw such a profusion of fruit. The trees were breaking under the rich yellow clusters. Among other things, there were hundreds of tall palms, spreading out their broad fans in the sun, apparently perfectly strong and at home under this warm sky. They are cultivated as ornaments for the churches on sacred days.
I caught some half dozen views on the way that I shall never get out of my memory. At one place particularly, I think near Fenale, we ran round the corner of a precipice by a road cut right into the face of a rock, two hundred feet at least above the sea; and a long view burst upon us at once of a sweet green valley, stretching back into the mountains as far as the eye could go, with three or four small towns, with their white churches, just checkering the broad sweeps of verdure, a rapid river winding through its bosom, and a back ground of the Piedmontese Alps, with clouds half-way up their sides, and snow glittering in the sun on their summits. Language cannot describe these scenes. It is but a repetition of epithets to attempt it. You must come and see them to feel how much one loses to live always at home, and read of such things only.
The courier pointed out to us the place in which Napoleon imprisoned the Pope of Rome—a low house, surrounded with a wall close upon the sea—and the house a few miles from Genoa, believed to have been that of Columbus.